Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday declared the country of 1.3 billion people free of open defecation, and turned his sights towards eradicating single-use plastic next. Modi — whose claim has been challenged by experts — made his ambitious “latrines for all” pledge when he first took office in 2014 and his announcement late Wednesday coincided with the 150th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, an icon not just for Indian independence but also sanitation. “In 60 months, 600 million people have been given access to toilets, more than 110 million toilets have been built,” Modi said in a speech to 20,000 village chiefs in western Ahmedabad city in his and Gandhi’s home state of Gujarat.
